Paul Molnar - July 24, 2002

Reminders of Holocaust

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Were there things you would see in the States that would touch off a memory with what happened? Train, for example.

No. I, I uh, no, I really, you know. Uh, and I have a uh, I have a theory why it was easier for me to get over it as it was for other people. And I think the reason is it was much more difficult for people who were adults, like my father, who could never get over it because he wasn't in camp. And I'm talking about also man his age or women who were in camp. I was too young to realize what I lost at the time. My father lost his whole family. So for him it was something that he could never get over it. I mean, that was something that although he wasn't in the camp he lived there all his life, he felt-he, he lived with guilt. Maybe if he could have done something, which was

Impossible.

imp...I mean he, he had these-see, the Jews from Budapest were not deported. The last group who was ever taken to Auschwitz from Hungary were the group I was in. Because Horthy, not because he was a good person, but he realized that uh, he's really in bad straits with the rest of the world, including the president and Roosevelt and Churchill. He officially stopped all deportations on the 5th of July. There was an order go out, no more. Nobody can be deported from Hungary anymore. But Eichmann decided, screw him. So he said, I got this last group, I got 'em together, I'm going to ship 'em out. So after us nobody was ever shipped again. So my father always felt that my mother's sister should have taken me, me and my mother and my, and my grandmother and my little brother. He would say, All you had to do was to start off, get in a streetcar and go to Budapest and be safe." But the reality is we didn't know it was any safer in Budapest than it is in Rákospalota. But that's how he felt. But I really you know, I'm, as I said, I have no nightmares. I can speak about it to you and it's, it doesn't bother me. Now there's some things I don't do. I don't go see any movies or TV shows. I never saw those.

You didn't see Schindler's List.

I lived it. I beg your pardon?

You didn't see Schindler's List.

No, I don't see those guys. I lived it. I don't want to see it again. I have some thoughts now. My oldest son just said to me, there was a story in last Sunday's New York Times about uh, four brothers and sisters who went back to uh, I think it's Lithuania. And uh, I got it there if you want to see it. And its about-they went back to see, what happened to their, to their grandparents. And my father says to me uh, I mean, my brother-my son said to me, what about, would I like to go back and relive it and go to these places with him, my son said. And I said, "I'll think about it." But you know, a lot of people go back and uh, and uh, it's like a pilgrimage. They go to Auschwitz and they go all these places. I don't know. I don't have the feeling, so I don't go.